Weekly book reviews by the three of us - Adèle Geras, Linda Newbery and Celia Rees - and our guests, all writers or independent booksellers, with occasional special features. We choose our own recommendations: fiction, non-fiction, memoirs, nature writing; in fact anything other than children's books, and not necessarily newly-published. We hope you'll enjoy our selections, and keep coming back for more.
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Monday, 8 May 2017

Guest review by Linda Sargent: THE BURIED GIANT by Kazuo Ishiguro

Linda Sargent is a writer who works as a publisher’s reader
(David Fickling Books since 2002). She has published short stories and articles
and her first novel, Paper Wings,
appeared in 2010; she is also the
author of Words and Wings, a
training guide to creative reminiscence work, available as a free download from
her website.

Recently we saw
the theatrical version of La Strada, based on the film by Fellini who is quoted
as saying that, “the best cinema (has) the language of dreams, everything you
see there has meaning, but the meaning is not always literal or easily
understandable”. This surely applies to all great art, and certainly to
Ishiguro’s powerful and hypnotic book, The Buried Giant. Anyone, picking it up and
imagining they’re embarking on another foray into a Game of Thrones’ world is
likely to be disappointed, and yet the fundamentals are there, but mystical
rather than literal. Similarly, there are the echoes of one of my favourite
childhood authors, Rosemary Sutcliff, in her vivid recreations of Roman and
post-Roman Britain. This, though, is a Britain of bogs and forests where ogres
lurk, stark mountains and rivers sprinkled with sprites and pixies, a Britain
of meandering and uncharted paths and all shrouded in a memory-hazing mist,
emanating from the dragon, Querig, as she slumbers under an enchantment cast by
the now dead, Merlin. A Britain that, for me, evoked reminders of more recent
wars too, such as those in the Balkans.

In this story
Arthur is dead and his one remaining knight, an ancient (almost Pythonesque)
Sir Gawain, wanders the land on his faithful horse, Horace, feeling it must be
he who is tasked with Querig’s end. It is on Horace that the book’s two main
characters, the elderly couple, Axl and Beatrice finally reach their
destination of the river and its waiting boatman.

The story begins
with Beatrice and Axl preparing to leave their communal, but not especially
friendly, Hobbit-like burrow; they set off to find their son, absent for some
years, planning to travel on foot to his village, despite the hazards of the
wild landscape. Essentially, it is an archetypal journey story, fraught with
both helpers and hinderers. They and everyone they meet, carry an unsettlingly
vague notion of the past that both inhibits and protects them in their present
life. Beatrice is nursing a pain that she tries to hide from Axl, but it is
clear to him, and to the reader, that it is no trivial matter and at one point,
en route, the two elderly Britons seek out a monastery where a monk may be able
to offer help to Beatrice, but where other dangers await. Meanwhile, they have
met with Sir Gawain, Wistan, a Saxon warrior on his own quest and also his
Saxon boy companion, Edwin, rescued from ostracism in his village because of a
wound (apparently caused by an ogre) and also on a personal mission, to find
his mother. The four of them come together, encounter dangers and frights, are
separated and re-united; however, the binding thread running through the story
is the abiding power of love between Axl and Beatrice. Throughout, Axl tenderly
refers to his wife as “princess” as he encourages and nurtures her during their
exhausting and challenging journey. And it is this love, with all of its past
imperfections, that mirrors the buried anger and resentment of the people in
this mist-covered land. What is raised here is the question of the seductive
enticement of repressing memories of past violence (of burying the giant) and
how, once uncovered, the dangers implicit in lifting the lid on possible revenge
and retribution. Near the end of the book as memories begin to clear, there’s a
moving plea from the elderly Axl to the young, newly fired-up, Edwin: “Master
Edwin! We beg this of you. In the days to come, remember us. Remember us and
this friendship when you were still a boy”.

With so much
upheaval, displacement and distrust caused by ongoing conflict in our current
world this is indeed a story for our times: a story for all time and one that
demands many readings. I loved it.